JAKARTA, Feb 23 (AFP) - East Timorese leaders told Indonesian
parliamentary heads Friday that unless Jakarta moves soon to try those
accused of committing crimes in East Timor, an international war crimes
tribunal will be unavoidable.

"If Indonesia delivers justice it will be good for everyone,"
East Timorese Foreign Minister Jose Ramos Horta told journalists after
meeting upper house speaker Amien Rais.

"However, if it fails there is no way the (UN) Security Council
itself can escape its responsibility to hold an international war crimes
tribunal," he said on the second of a three-day visit.

Ramos Horta was speaking after he and the territory's chief UN
administrator Sergio Viera de Mello met with Rais and lower house speaker
Akbar Tanjung, along with members of the parliament's foreign affairs
committee.

De Mello said Thursday that the process to try 22 people accused by
Indonesian prosecutors of involvement in the violence surrounding the 1999
ballot violence was "in legal limbo."

UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has warned that if Jakarta
does not try the suspects, and justice is not seen to be done, an
international tribunal could be convened.

UN investigators say they have evidence that at least 600 East Timorese
were killed by the militia, when they went on a rampage of arson, burning
and looting to avenge the quit-Indonesia vote.

At Friday's meeting Rais "reiterated his preference for a domestic
court to hold the trials," Horta said.

De Mello and Horta expressed their support for the setting up of ad hoc
tribunals to hear East Timor crimes, coming up for approval by the
parliament in the coming weeks.

"If that takes place it will be a major step forward for
Indonesia's credibility," Horta said.

"We don't want a war crimes tribunal (just) for the sake of
it."

The change of status of one of the most notorious suspects named by
Indonesian prosecutors, militia leader Eurico Guterres, -- from prison
into house arrest -- while still on trial in Jakarta on charges unrelated
to the Timor violence, boded poorly, Horta said.

"It doesn't help much in the credibility of the whole Indonesian
legal system but the trial is continuing," he said.

"Eurico Guterres is suspected of many more serious crimes,"
he said referring to the 1999 violence.

JAKARTA, Feb 22 (AFP) - The head of the UN administration in East Timor
Thursday said he hoped Indonesia would soon convene ad hoc human rights
tribunals to try those accused in the bloody post-ballot violence in the
territory.

"Our hope is that the courts will materialize soon, because those
cases need to be brought to a tribunal court as soon as possible,"
Sergio Vieira de Mello said after a meeting in Jakarta with Indonesian
Attorney General Marzuki Darusman.

"We are now in some kind of legal limbo, and this limbo cannot
last indefinitely," de Mello added.

He said Darsuman had briefed him and East Timor's Foreign Minister,
Nobel Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, on the process that would lead to the
establishment of the ad hoc courts, but gave no time frame.

De Mello also said that Darusman had agree to the United Nations
sending a team of investigators "to carry out the questioning of
Eurico here in Jakarta."

He was referring to the former head of the notorious Aitarak (Thorn)
militia, Eurico Guterres, who is currently standing trial in Jakarta for
offences unrelated to the September 1999 East Timor violence.

The UN wants to question Guterres and 21 other suspects named by
Darusman's office in five documented cases of gross human rights
violations in the violence wreaked by Indonesian militiary-raised and
trained militia folowing the territory's vote for independence.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson has warned that if Jakarta
does not try the 22, and justice is not seen to be done, an international
tribunal could be convened.

UN investigators say they have evidence that at least 600 East Timorese
were killed by the militia, when they went on a rampage of arson, burning
and looting to avenge the quit-Indonesia vote.

De Mello told journalists he had also brought up the case of the murder
of Leonard Manning, a UN peacekeeper from New Zealand.

"I also asked the Attorney General about the arrest of one suspect
in the (July, 2000) murder case of Private Manning, who is now under
arrest," he said.

"We want to question him. We have also requested for the arrest of
five other suspects, also for the case of Private Manning."

Indonesian authorities said last month that they would not allow the
man they arrested in the Manning case, Yakobus Bere, 29, to be tried
outside the country.

"According to Indonesian law, we cannot extradite our nationals.
That is what our extradition law says," police chief for East Nusa
Tenggara province, Made Mangku Pastika, said last month.

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